The year is about 1989, and I’m the editor of The Monroe Evening News, a 24,000-circulation daily in southeast Michigan. And I’m cranking through a roll of microfilm, looking for something in the paper in the early 1930s.

Scanning several weeks' worth of film, I don’t find what I want. But I keep seeing group shots of schoolchildren, lined up in neat rows, smiling into the camera. Finally, I stop at the next one to see what these are about.

The cutline explains that the photo shows the entire student body of the Havekost School in rural Monroe County -- 48 kids. It says we printed their picture because every single family subscribed to The Monroe Evening News.

Not only that – the cutline says it’s the 24th school featured for 100% subscribership.

In 1989, my mind reeled. I doubted I could find a single classroom where every family subscribed. Now, after 17 more years of declining circulation, the chances are even smaller.

Newspapers have become optional. In those days, they were indispensable. Thinking about the Havekost students, you can see why.

How did information reach their homes? Four sources – books, magazines, radio and newspapers. Five, counting word of mouth. The newspaper was virtually the sole lifeline connecting those homes to their communities and their world. Unless you were willing to live in total isolation, you had to have at least one newspaper.

Today, we can’t even count the number of sources reaching a typical home, if it has Internet access. And much of what’s in a newspaper is now available from many other sources, any time of the day or night.

Funny thing, though … in the newspaper business, we still think, at least subconsciously, that newspapers are indispensable. We can’t imagine how so many people – 58 percent, according to a 2004 Pew study – live without them. What’s wrong with those people?

Change of scene:

My friend John is serving in the Peace Corps, building water supply systems for Iban longhouses in the jungles of Borneo.

After a day’s hard work and dinner, he and the locals are squatting around the fire, and the conversation turns to food. “What do Americans eat?” an Iban tribesman asks.

John recites a long list – beef, pork, chicken, potatoes, fruit, vegetables, dairy products, ice cream, and so on.

Silence. Then an Iban adds, “And rice.”

“Well, no,” John says. He explains that Americans have so many other food choices that they typically eat rice only a couple of times in a month.

Longer silence. Then a grim voice says, “I couldn’t live without rice!”

This happened at more than one longhouse.

Newspaper people are like the Ibans. News and newspapers have always been a staple of our information diet, and we can’t imagine how anyone could live – or would want to – without them.

Today the grownup kids of the Havekost School, and their whole generation, feel the same way. They cut their teeth on just four or five sources of information, so their newspaper habits remain strong to this day. These days, around 60 percent are daily readers, according to a 2004 Pew study.

But Baby Boomers had another huge source – television – that gobbled up hours a day during their childhoods. More choice equals less newspaper readership; now only about 50 percent are daily readers.

Gen X kids had even more choice – video games, movie rentals, all those cable channels – probably even a TV in the bedroom. Less than 40 percent are regular newspaper readers.

Gen Y had all that plus the Internet, Gameboys, IM’s, ipods, and more. And the percent of regular newspaper readers is in the low 20s.

Newspaper people keep asking, “How can we get more people to read newspapers?” – i.e., eat more rice. It’s a good question; newspapers are far from dead, and they should try to be as useful and engaging for as many people as possible, for as long as possible.

But at this point, we need to be asking, “How can we engage the people who don’t want a traditional newspaper?”

This takes a different kind of thinking. We have to stop thinking like the Ibans – assuming everyone wants and needs the diet of information we grew up on. Instead, we have to develop a keen understanding of the many ways people use information in their own lives – what information-based jobs they’re trying to get done, and when, where, and how.

In effect, we have to reverse the telescope and look from the customer’s end.

This is a key concept in the Newspaper Next project. Our consulting partners – Dr. Clayton Christensen and Innosight LLC – say this kind of thinking is critical when you’re trying to develop new products and services that customers will adopt and consider great.

If newspaper companies want to figure out how to be indispensable to the growing ranks of their non-customers, this is where they need to start – with the lives people are living, and the information jobs they’re trying to get done. It’s been amazing to me how much more opportunity I see for newspaper companies when I take that point of view.

More on customer “jobs to be done” in future installments….